What The Hell Should I Do with my Life? Essay

Obviously getting an education after high school is important to a lot of people now a days. People want to get well-paying jobs so they can support their families and live a good life. There are many different ways people can achieve these things, by choosing to learn something that will form a career, vocational training, or liberal arts. Liberal arts is a tricky slope, and two authors have split ideas to say about them. Now a days I feel like it is harder for kids to decide what they would want to do with their life, what degree to get so they can make some good money to support themselves.

In “The new Liberal Arts” by Sanford Ungar, he states that,” It may be that studying the liberal arts is actually the best form of career education” (191). On the other hand you have the piece of writing called “Are Too Many People Going to College?” by Charles Murray. He thinks that “K-8 are the right years to teach the core knowledge, and the effort should get off to a running start in the elementary school” (224). What can help students decide on what careers to choose, what factors can determine this?

As a college student I believe it would have been better to have students learn core knowledge from K-8. It just seems to make more sense, at these ages your brain is like a sponge and you are able to learn concepts a whole lot easier. It would, in my opinion, make people use their mind a lot more, at a younger age. Saying that too many people are going to college may or may not be correct, but saying too many people are going to college and graduating with degrees that are going to make finding a job more difficult could be very true. “More people should be getting the basics of a liberal education” “[in] elementary and middle school” (223).

Charles Murray implies it would be easy to learn the basics of a liberal education before you go to college. Otherwise a “Liberal education in college means taking on the tough stuff” (225). Meaning that to learn the liberal degree stuff in college will be more difficult seeing as you already need to have a base of whatever topic you are trying to learn. That isn’t always true in what Sanford Ungar is saying.

“It is often the people who are the newest to certain ideas and approaches who are the most original and inventive…” (193).The people that are good at using their minds would probably be best at graduating with a liberal arts degree. I would have to say it really depends on what type of thinker you are. I feel in college the core knowledge courses just become more complicated than it needs to be and would be best learned in early years, instead of the standard sciences, English and math.

As I am a second semester freshman, I think I am prime example how people decide whether college is for them or not. I’m feeling out my classes and trying out a lot of different classes that I wouldn’t usually take. I still have no major and I am not leaning towards anything, but I did get talked to about a liberal arts degree. It seems that a liberal arts degree is for the people that don’t want to just do one thing with their life, they can major in a couple things and leave with a variety. As of now, if I can’t find a field of study I like, I may consider doing liberal arts. Maybe many other college students are doing the exact same thing that I am doing.

Just because you have a Bachelor’s degree, doesn’t mean you are in the clear. “When high-school graduates think that obtaining a B.A. will help them get a higher-paying job, they are only narrowly correct” (233). A lot of people are graduating with bachelor degrees these days, which makes it harder for employers to choose to hire.

Then again it seems that “A growing number of corporation, including some highly technical fields, are headed by people with liberal arts degrees” (192). By Ungar saying this, he is pointing out that liberal arts is a growing field and it will be needed more in the future, rather than these single career degrees. In college, you feel the pressure to choose a degree that will, in the future, make you money to live a life that is comfortable with you. You are always doing the research to see what degrees are most likely going to be the best to obtain a job after graduation. Ungar has some good points here, if it is true that in the future a liberal arts degree will be more important than a single career degree, then maybe more students will switch to that field.

I think there is a lot of people going to college right now. I really don’t think there is too many. But I do believe that some people are going for all the wrong reasons and are just spending money that they could save. Most of the time people don’t know what they want when they go to college, which is perfectly fine.

There has to be a point in which you figure out if college is for you or not, rather than just keep wasting your money at something that isn’t going to help you because it’s not for you. I’m in the middle with this as well, in some ways, too many people are going to college, but as long as they are getting the reward after the years of college, then it should all be worth it. Once you figure out that college is for you, it all depends on the degree. A liberal arts degree sounds interesting enough that anybody could like it and find a job in their field, but you can say that about any degree. You could move and probably always find a job in your field, but moving is very strenuous. It all depends on the structure of our economy and what jobs needed to be filled.

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